5 Steps to Kill the Process Snake

Functionalisation might be effective in creating robust processes, but it can have significant negative impacts on the client experience. Interestingly, it probably isn’t bringing the internal efficiencies organisations would hope for either.

If you want an example, think for a moment about which large corporates you find the most frustrating to deal with. I would hazard a guess that the frustration is directly attributable to a robust process snake which means your contact point is unable to do much to respond to your query. For me, the thought of having to phone my current internet provider is enough to generate a cold sweat.

Of course, the call centre operators are so disempowered, they are unable to deal with anything that slightly deviates from the script. “Sorry you’ll need to talk to accounts”, “I’ll have to see if an engineer is available”, “please can you dial back in on 1xxxx” and “if you want to cancel the service please email us on..” are not great client experiences.

In fact, if the operator actually tried to help, they would likely find themselves in a disciplinary for breaking the internal protocols.

The process snake has essentially killed the possibility that any employees feel empowered enough to be proactive in resolving your issue.

What makes the process snake particularly insidious is that once it has embedded itself in the organisation it become incredibly resilient. The worst examples occur when the snake has created powerful inter-dependencies across multiple departments but there is no one person in the organisation who either owns or controls the snake from head to tail.

At this point, the process snake has created an unmanaged and unmanageable system which independently effects behaviours across the organisation.

In this video, I talk about these unwanted negative externalities, why the standard approaches to solve don’t work and the 5 steps you can take to kill the rogue process snakes…before they squeeze any more life out of your company.